


Stay

by ofsevenseas



Category: N.Flying (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Royalty, F/M, I don't speak Korean don't yell at me about the names, that Goong au that nobody asked for, the dongsaeng line are all genderflipped
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-01 15:10:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15145838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofsevenseas/pseuds/ofsevenseas
Summary: In which the predetermined calm of Lee Seunghyub's life does not survive contact with Crown Princess Haeseung.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kitsunec4](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunec4/gifts).



The first time Seunghyub meets Her Imperial Highness the Crown Princess of Korea and heiress presumptive to the throne, she is struggling out of heavy silk robes of state, one shoulder a mess of ties, the white socks and under trousers already cast to the floor. She looks up, beckoning him forward hurriedly.

“Close the door!” she yelps, while he’s still stunned.

He checks behind himself, reflexively, and from beyond the corner Jaehee winks at him encouragingly.

There’s supposed to be an official introduction, of course, at some point, but the dowager empress hadn’t wanted to spring everything on the newly-crowned princess (‘newly-captured princess’, Jaehee had whispered to him, her eyebrows wriggling suggestively, before Kwangjin had dragged her away) all at once. As the dowager empress had finished explaining to him just now, rather threateningly, in her offices. Seunghyub tries to suppress a shudder at the look she’d given him and refocuses on the present.

At where the princess is currently halfway out a second-floor window.

Cursing under his breath at Prince Yoonsung, Prince Yoonsung’s insistence on living outside the palace confines and raising his child ‘according to his own lights’, Prince Yoonsung’s abdication in favour of his only daughter, and, according to every trashy tabloid website, Prince Yoonsung’s monstrous tendency to spoil his baby girl; Seunghyub rushes to the windowsill and catches the princess’ hands in his own, hoping that his occasional pull-up with the boys suffices to save them all from national scandal and disaster. She’s a surprisingly solid weight against his arms, and she’s looking up at him with her eyes crinkled, her body propped casually on the side of the new imperial residence as if it were a simple backyard fence.

“Don’t worry!” She shouts at him, one foot dangling over the tiny ledge, after which there is a considerable drop. “I’m a trained Marine!”

Seunghyub feels the flash of impish dimples like a punch to the solar plexus, and he smiles back at her, the urge to reciprocate so automatic he doesn’t manage to catch it at all until it’s gone.

“Don’t be silly,” he says to her reprovingly. “Your new house has doors too.”

Princess Haeseung, named as he had been for the inheritance of their grandfathers’ hopes and friendship, shimmies experimentally in her jeans (and when did she have time to put jeans on during all that, he wonders to himself later), and laughs at him. “Doors are boring, bodyguard-oppa.

“Don’t worry,” she continues, “I brought my phone with me, if you have an emergency.”

“But - are you -” Seunghyub wants to know if she is unhappy with the sudden relocation, if she dislikes her new role as the public face of the imperial women, if the staff are bullying her for being every bit as unconventional as the rumours had suggested - but he’s out of time, and Princess Haeseung shakes her wrists lightly, both of them still caught in his grip, and asks, very politely, as if they are at tea in the lotus-viewing garden, “May I please have my hands back?”

Seunghyub is still staring out the window at her retreating figure, when Kwangjin slings a sympathetic arm across his shoulders. Somewhere from behind them, Jaehee says, “ah, so the lovers meet,” in exaggerated _hasoseo-che_ , like she’s a minister making pronouncements in a sageuk.

-

The second time Seunghyub is brought into Haeseung’s orbit, Cha Hyunjung comes flying into his office, interrupting a conference call with the Minister of Culture. She stares at him as he stutters out a quick apology to the minister, her fingers poised on his laptop lid, and shuts it without so much as a by-your-leave as soon as the chat window chimes the end of the call. She taps bright scarlet nails against the aluminum shell, a staccato declaration of hostilities, and says, ‘The princess is missing.’

Mostly, when Seunghyub and Cha Hyunjung had interacted, it had been in their respective capacities as unofficial prince consort-in-waiting and chief of staff to the queen. After the decks of imperial staff had been shuffled following the king’s death, she had been kept on post-transition in the office of the heir. Seunghyub isn’t sure if it’s a sign of stability as the nation prepares itself for its first queen regnant or Chief of Staff Cha’s reputation.

Her official job description is acting as the nerve centre for the office of the heir, but what she really deals in is information. Seunghyub is certain that she has a file on everyone who comes within shouting distance of the palace, and equally certain that should she wish to, she can take any of them out at the knees without disarranging the elegant bun she keeps her hair knotted in.

So it’s no surprise to him when she looms over his chair, nudging his knee into a tight space against his desk, and continues, “Her Highness spoke to you before leaving the palace last week. Did she tell you where she was going?”

Seunghyub experiences a moment of deja-vu as he tries not to leap up from his chair and salute, his body somehow convinced that he is back in the army and his captain has just demanded he list all the ways in which he had failed his latest simulation. As he presses himself into his chair, trying to find a spot that won’t turn his back into a twist of agony, Hyunjung’s perfectly groomed eyebrows click together, forming three grooves that vaguely resemble the hanja for ‘cheon’. Then he very quickly backtracks that thought and deletes in case she can read minds, because rumour has it she once stabbed through a cheesy potato thrown midair with her Visconti fountain pen and went right back to work.

The gossip mill has a million and one stories about Cha Hyunjung, and he can’t imagine Haeseung’s oddball upbringing equipped her with the tools to hold her own against someone adept at the delicate balancing act of the imperial household. Seunghyub is surrounded by his own papers and binders of reports, research and a lifetime’s preparation - this is his sanctuary, and he’ll be damned if he gives way to paranoia here.

“Right,” he says, trying for something neutral.

She’s worried and wrongfooted with it, covering up badly with aggressiveness. Now that he sees it, factions and loyalties click into place, his world turns just slightly on its side and he relaxes, his hands spreading open on the armrests.

“There’s no point to killing her now,” Seunghyub points out, decides to cut through the usual bullshit.

Cha Hyunjung narrows her eyes at him, sits down slowly on his desk, and makes a motion that he takes to mean ‘go on’.

“It wouldn’t normally be an issue, but we have just lost the king, the queen, our crown princess, and the two younger princes all at once. Even had their next step been the elimination of our only remaining heir, it would bring up the suspicion of foul play.” He outlines the conclusion of his own investigations, and omits that there has been no official reaction to the ‘accident’ - they’re both aware of that already.

“The costs outweigh the benefits,” Hyunjung summarizes.

“Yes. Whoever -” Hyunjung cuts Seunghyub off, as someone knocks on his door and opens it.

It’s Kwangjin, and he looks relieved, so whatever news he has, it’s not what they’d both been afraid of.

“Her Highness returned to Gyeongbokgung by the same side entrance, and her friends from the army and university report no one suspicious during her stay with them.” Kwangjin’s parade rest is a little straighter today, and Seunghyub suppresses a wince of sympathy for the officers who had been assigned to Haeseung.

“I’ll search the eastern palace and royal residence,” Seunghyub volunteers, because of the three of them he’s the most familiar with the living spaces, and Kwangjin has a security team to whip into shape.

Hyunjung rises from her perch, balance rock-steady on 12cm heels, and nods at him. “I’ll coordinate the search of the outer palace -” She pauses and turns to Kwangjin, “Unless you have any suggestions?”

Kwangjin makes a face - he is nominally assigned to Haeseung as she acclimates to life inside the imperial palace, as well as pulling double duty as leading the rotation of palace guards allowed inside the residential quarters.

He’d rather save Kwangjin from the headache if he can, so Seunghyub finds his map of the inner palace, the one they give him every year at the same time they renew his access privileges, and draws two careful rectangles. “I’ll be concentrating on these areas. Try to avoid disturbing the papers in King Yoonjung’s archives; they haven’t been fully catalogued yet.”

Hyunjung stares at him with the blankness of someone who has never in her life cared about the personal archives of her king and isn’t about to start now, and Kwangjin rubs at his forehead. He suggests the general grids that Hyunjung’s people should cover and puts the entire palace on lockdown.

Squinting at the map as if his category five migraine has already made landfall, Kwangjin wraps up with, “I’ll be waiting for your calls.”

-

Today is one of Seoul’s scorchers, no clouds for miles as the sky blazes down on Seunghyub, the heat burning its way through his closely tailored jacket. Because gossip travels like wildfire in the palace, he’s halfway through searching the dignified pavilions of the crown prince when Jaehee texts him.

_（´ヘ｀；）haeseungie is missing?? :( :( :(_

_Everything is under control._  
_Please let Her Imperial Majesty the Queen Dowager know we are doing our utmost to locate Her Highness._  
_LSH_

_How did you find out?  
LSH_

_duh Hyunjung unnie told me to stay put_

_Indeed.  
LSH_

_grand aunt doesnt know dont worry im running interference_

_I believe the correct term is ‘great-aunt’.  
LSH_

_And thank you.  
LSH_

_look if u combine grand dowager n great aunt what do u get  
thats right, grand aunt_

_lol u must be worried ur grammar just went places_  
_if its any consolation haeseungie can take care of herself_  
_shes no fool_

Seunghyub puts his phone away, walks out of the _Dong-gun_ grounds with a wave at the guards who radio Kwangjin’s subordinates for permission, and let him through. He shares Jaehee’s general assessment of Haeseung’s character, though he would like for it to be borne out by actual evidence of her safety.

The paths are well-maintained, which is a relief for his ankles as he jogs his way toward the barely visible gables of the new imperial house.

The modern residences stand a good distance away from the grouping of palaces with _Gangnyeong-jeon_ at its centre, a number of decorative gardens and arboretums in between for camouflage, so the main body of the complex retains its historical beauty and mystique. Personally, Seunghyub thinks the imperial family had wanted to claw back some privacy for themselves in the never-ending series of ceremony and duty, the modest gate offering an illusion that such a separation was attainable.

He sympathizes, to an extent, as he finds his way through the evergreens liberally planted in the winding style that traditional gardeners so favoured. He hadn’t been born to the lineage or the scrutiny, but he’d been chosen all the same, sombre palace servants come to take him away from his parents, shutting him in ancient dusty rooms, to memorize equally ancient tracts and be taught the weight of responsibility and gratitude he owed to the crown. His round child’s fingers had slipped over the calligraphy brush’s polished handle, and he sneezed endlessly within a five meter radius of any horse. Still, he held on through the etiquette lessons and practised them in classes with noble children who whispered with each other and smiled knowingly when he was in the room.

Seunghyub looks at the circular honeycomb of white stucco and warm wooden beams, a feat of architecture that The Chosun Ilbo had called ‘the perfect marriage of traditional hanoks and modern dynamism’, but had mostly translated into Princess Seungyeon’s little brothers climbing up the cozy gable roofs and disappearing into the niche between deck and garden in the searing summer months. He rules out the orangerie as too hot, and heads toward the observatory, built across the far edge of a decorative pond and cooled by some arcane combination of volcanic stone and glass.

This deep into the royal residence, Seunghyub closes his eyes, because it’s never been so quiet for as long as he can remember, though six months is long enough for a whole array of bustling staff to remove all traces that the king and queen had ever lived here with their children - most traces, Seunghyub corrects himself, as he takes the stairs up to the observatory two at a time. The lotuses on the pond are in full bloom, delicate blush pinks radiating out from a pale white centre, and one red bud, stark against the greens and blues of the pond. Cultivated from a 1,200 year old seed donated by a temple and older than the Joseon dynasty itself, Princess Seungyeon had named it her sacred lotus.

He shakes his head and opens the door to the third floor. Surprisingly he doesn’t find Princess Haeseung there, but as he climbs into the half-attic, half-split level, he notices a curled up bundle of blue gingham that resolves itself into his missing princess. He sighs to himself, careful not to wake her, and texts Kwangjin and Hyunjung the all-clear.

Seunghyub ends up perched on the ladder, waiting for her to wake up because he can’t bear to disturb her moment of hard-won peace.

Haeseung has one arm curled under the bunched-up hoodie she’s using as a pillow, short hair just brushing past her cheeks and still growing out, with soft auburn highlights from spending so much time in the sun. She doesn’t look like a princess, much less a queen, tucked away into herself like this, and Seunghyub allows himself a moment’s luxury to be angry at Prince Yoonsung abandoning her in the midst of politicians and a frenzied imperial staff that has funneled all its grief and confusion into preparing her (and the kingdom) for queenship.

The outfit isn’t one of Seungyeon’s - the dressers would never - but the style and colouring might as well be. It’s not going to work, he thinks absently, trying to fashion Haeseung into any image but her own. Seunghyub has known her only six months, and most of that at a distance as they had proceeded through the mourning rituals and transfers of office, but he’s already seen it: Haeseung is no figurehead monarch, will remake the structures of imperial power, be perfect.

His phone chimes. It’s Jaehee, somehow omniscient even under lockdown.

 _dude_  
_hyubbie u giant stork_  
_did u run thru TWO giant palace complexes in an hr_  
_go drink a water u idiot_

Seunghyub checks the time and sighs, sorry that he has to be the one to do this, and shakes Haeseung awake gently, fingertips barely touching her shoulder. She blinks up at him and then says, “Just fifteen minutes more please,” drops back into a dead sleep, even as Hyunjung’s death threats join Jaehee’s unseemly cackling through text messaging. Seunghyub takes his courage into both hands, lifts the princess free of the nook she’s wedged herself into, and begins the long walk back to the briefing room.

If he’s honest with himself, Haeseung is heavier than he can actually handle; the winding stairs down the side of the observatory are not doing him any favours. He’s not built for this, the white knight charging in to magically beat all her problems into submission - and the issues facing her are resistant to brute-forcing anyway.

He looks down at where she’s cradled close, her stubby too-short shiba eyebrows and cheerfully single-lidded eyes, a strong nose and the perfect cupid’s bow of her lips. Some part of him cannot muster belief that she can sleep through all of this, the walk down to the gate and waving away the guards (who at least have the sense to look guilty when they realize she managed to get past them unnoticed). She’s too trusting of her staff, and he doesn’t know how she’ll balance the reality of a political marriage against the freedom she has always enjoyed.

In this, too, she is different from her cousin: Seungyeon had known from the first, had prepared herself to be well-bred and proper, presented herself as a flawlessly cut gem in the imperial treasury. She had cultivated a love for plants and horses, living things that required a delicate touch. He was not in love with her, because that was not their language together, but he had chosen to stay by her side and take on part of her burdens all the same, had wanted to be her bulwark and shield both when trouble came knocking.

But now Seungyeon is dead, and would never need him again.

Seunghyub hands Haeseung over to Hyunjung, who only raises an eyebrow at Haeseung, stirring at last, a crease on her cheek from his shirt. He doesn’t register much of the briefing, and waves off Kwangjin when he inches closer in between shouting at two different camps of imperial staff.

He doesn’t even take leave of the princess, choosing to instead shut himself into his suite and throw himself down into his office chair, his phone screen lighting up non-stop with well-meaning concern (Kwangjin) and outright mockery (Jaehee). Hyunjung is mercifully handling the fallout and not taking the sharp end of her fountain pens to his jugular, for which he is grateful. Every bit of luck helps, in this place.

When he falls asleep, his phone is still flashing unread texts on its screen.

 **✫⌒*･ﾟ✲ baby harpy (✿˵◕ ɜ◕˵)**  
_put haeseungie down shes gonna be fine_

_if u give urself heatstroke bc u had a Feeling i reserve the right to laugh at u 5ever_

_1 attached image_

**Kwangjin hyung**  
_Do you want to talk?_


	2. Chapter 2

Predictably, it’s Jaehee who breaks into his self-imposed exile to yell at him.

Ignoring the storm of crinkling papers surrounding him, Seunghyub flails his way upright through a thousand printouts of ahjummas having conniptions over their new queen-in-waiting’s failings. (They are, in order: her obvious singleness, her unconventional looks, and her lack of any queenly graces. At some point they linked it up into a nightmare cycle and started fighting amongst themselves about whose grandmother had had the best kimchi recipe - in Seunghyub’s defense, he’d had a wild day.)

Jaehee looks, if possible, even less impressed than usual, and brandishes a bouquet of blush-peach peonies splashed liberally in red at their cores, some petals still furled tightly. The heavy heads droop and bounce along as she works her way through her current mood, arms waving in every direction.

“And YOU -” Jaehee hisses, stalking forward, in the sort of tantrum that had always heralded hundred thousands of wons in repairs and priceless imperial artefacts being broken. Seunghyub does a quick inventory around his office and decides to sacrifice the hideous Mont Blanc stationery set from Kang Hongshik if she does fly into a rage, and tries to comb out the flattened ruin of his hair with a quick prayer of apology to his stylist. 

“Have you even eaten since last night? I swear to god Seunghyub -” Jaehee all but shrieks in his face, and in another life she would be a singer at one of the sinkhole talent agencies, with a loyal fan following and perfect vivacious flair on the stage. Now, she focuses the full strength of her vocals on him instead.

“As much as I would love to see you choking him with a bouquet of flowers, Jaehee, I’m afraid we have other priorities.” Cha Hyunjung cuts in smoothly, fully recovered from her brush with emotions yesterday.

“You’re the perfect candidate.” Hyunjung continues. 

For a moment Seunghyub doesn’t understand what she means - and then he remembers the conclusion he’d come to at 3am this morning: he is royal but not, widower but not, family without the complication of competing interests, and best positioned for wrapping Haeseung into the layers of her duties, to take them one by one from a ghost and put the full mantle into her capable hands.

During the utter shitshow of the funerals, Seunghyub had behaved, had not fought the ceremonial trappings that had placed him in the farthest circle of courtiers. The queen dowager, inconsolable, had had to be wheeled in by her family, and he had watched as the Kang clan and the Park clan swept up in her wake, black as crows and gleaming under the attention. Openly flouting convention, Jaehee had left her flock of pallbearer cousins with them, and stood by him until even the photographers and press had left.

He knows, distantly, what it had cost her - and continues to cost her, to support him so publicly. Wistfulness burns at the corners of his eyes as he remembers the gentle way Seungyeon had of making rumours inconsequential, their companionable tea breaks in the orangerie discussing Jaehee’s latest antics.

Seunghyub takes a deep breath. It will be for Seungyeon’s sake too, a final debt to be paid to the family that had taken him in and made him one of their own.

“I’ll do it.” He tells Cha Hyunjung, while Jaehee huddles in a corner with her mobile. “I’ll teach her everything I know.”

Feeling like even the sharp points of her red blazer are judging him right now, Seunghyub nevertheless meets her eyes dead on. Cha Hyunjung looks down at him from an incredible height, wearing yet another pair of sky-high heels, and sighs.

“I’ll settle for 10% of what you know.” She confesses, with the fatigue of someone who has had to find and arrange a host of tutors on everything from formal court language to flower arranging.

For the second time in as many days, their conversation is cut short. Jaehee barrels back into his side of the office and thrusts the bouquet of peonies into Seunghyub’s hands, and informs him, with the air of a great lady condescending to her inferiors, that princess Haeseung will be expecting him in the paulownia room.

“Take these to her and introduce yourself, properly this time.” Jaehee orders, tossing herself onto the sofa next to him, squashing papers under her deceptively thin frame.

“Are those -” Seunghyub stares at her legs, mesmerized, because he can’t imagine the royal dressers agreeing to buy her harem pants, or that the dowager queen would allow her to keep them. They’re an indeterminate shade of gray and balloon out at the ankles, utterly unsuitable.

Jaehee beams at him. “I’m so glad you noticed!! They’re experimental _baji_ from a new designer in Cheongdam-dong, isn’t this shade of taupe great on me?”

“Ye-es…” Seunghyub agrees, mainly because he had learned long ago that agreeing was the best way to keep Jaehee happy.

“Excellent!” Jaehee says, “You can go tell Kang Hongshik that and get him off my back.”

Seunghyub can’t stop his face from scrunching up involuntarily, and even Cha Hyunjung lets out a tiny snort of derision.

“Alright,” Cha Hyunjung says, with the indulgent tolerance of an older sister, and shoos Jaehee away with her omnipresent tablet. “I need to read him in now, go away.”

She bounces up with a slight pout and lingers for a little longer, before Hyunjung clears her throat significantly, physically pushing her out of Seunghyub’s office before shutting the door.

“You know she’s wearing those monstrosities to scandalise the nobility out of gossiping about princess Haeseung, right?” Hyunjung mentions to Seunghyub, once Jaehee is out of earshot. 

It explains a lot, and is so very like Jaehee that he huffs a short laugh, despite himself. 

“Here,” Hyunjung says, handing him a clear plastic sleeve filled with papers, and a tablet that looks like the twin to her own. “You’ve been demoted.” The flash of humour in her voice is there and gone, a wholly pleasant surprise that carries him through the generic onboarding packet for palace advisors and secretaries all the way to Princess Haeseung’s weekly schedule. 

Seunghyub winces at the list. It looks like Hyunjung’s dragged old Dr. Kim out of retirement for Confucian theory and history - a stickler for traditional hierarchies, the man’s never liked Seunghyub for leapfrogging to the front of the queue, and it had showed in how his essays had been graded. Everyone on this schedule has the credentials of an imperial tutor and the attitude to go along with it.

“Why didn’t you just enroll her in Sungkyunkwan? It would have been less hassle.” Seunghyub teases, because apparently this is his world now.

Hyunjung gives him a withering look, the golden morning light lingering along her cheekbones. 

“Ma’am.” Cheekily, he salutes her, because if he’s going to torpedo his own reputation by shadowing his ex-fiancée’s younger cousin like someone with certain ambitions, he might as well as go down having fun.

-

Seunghyub finds the princess staring dismally down at a bowl of steamed pears when he does get to the paulownia room.

“Try the _hobak-juk_ first,” he suggests, as he hands the bouquet of peonies off to a waiting attendant. He’s always had a soft spot for the kabocha porridge prepared by the palace cooks, to the point that it became a mainstay of his diet every time he had an allergic reaction to one of Seungyeon’s horses. However, Princess Haeseung’s response is to wrinkle her nose at all three bowls on her tray and put her short-handled spoon down - no clatter of silverware this time, Seunghyub notes.

“Hyunjung-unnie,” Princess Haeseung wheedles, her chin lowered to the table and her eyes closed, resembling nothing so much as a starved puppy.

“Little Haeseungies who sneak away and sleep in damp corners don’t get a full royal breakfast table.” Hyunjung singsongs back, taking the peony-filled celadon vase from the attendant and closing the door behind her.

“Mrrphm.” Disgusted, Princess Haeseung puts her face on both her hands, elbows akimbo and narrowly missing the bowl of summer kimchi on her right. 

The paulownia suite, historically the preferred quarters of highly ranked imperial princesses, is an elegant series of rooms linked through traditional screen doors and papered hallways. Everything in this room, from the red breakfast table, the silk blankets and cushions, the 9-paneled screen with its embroidered butterflies and magpies, to the woven bamboo mats underfoot, are handmade and carry the weight of history upon them. In her light summer hanbok and socks, Princess Haeseung looks perfectly at home, though her posture would probably make the etiquette tutors twitch for their disciplining rulers.

It’s the first time Seunghyub has seen her asleep mid-conversation, though he’d heard about her infamous ability to nap any- and everywhere. Hyunjung breaks the moment without a second thought, bopping Princess Haeseung on the head gently with the vase before setting it down, and then, when that elicits only a few wriggles of discontent, she picks up the long silver chopsticks and places a chunk of kimchi radish between her lips.

As if magically on cue, Princess Haeseung opens her eyes, and, like a baby bird, opens her mouth in a silent demand for more.

Seunghyub stares. It’s the kind of reaction only incredibly spoiled children can manage naturally, and Hyunjung arches one dark brow at him, as if to say, ‘You see what I have to deal with?’

“I need your attention for five minutes,” Hyunjung announces, “and then you can go back to frustrating whichever tutor of the hour it is you’re already late to.”

Princess Haeseung doesn’t even pretend to be ashamed as she sits up and twinkles happily at Hyunjung, like they are teenagers conspiring to skip classes instead of crown princess and her closest advisor. 

Under the table where Princess Haeseung cannot see, Hyunjung jabs Seunghyub in the leg with her fountain pen, and he clears his throat, bringing Haeseung’s curious and friendly gaze to where he sits across from her.

“Your highness,” he bows, form impeccable from years of practice, and continues. “My name is Lee Seunghyub, and I’m honoured -”

“Oh!” Princess Haeseung interrupts, hands clapped together and smiling at him, dimples out in full force. “I remember you, bodyguard-oppa!”

“Err.” Seunghyub isn’t sure what to say in response, and looks to Hyunjung for help. 

“You must be transferring over to my team?” Princess Haeseung continues. “Don’t worry about formality,” she continues, “Just call me Haeseung!” She doesn’t even look at the personnel portfolio that Hyunjung had put together before extending a hand over the breakfast table.

“Your highness,” Seunghyub decides that now is a good time to solidify her grasp on royal protocol.

Princess Haeseung ignores him in favour of flapping her hand invitingly, and Seunghyub, torn between laughing and correcting her on all counts, takes it and bows, as is proper.

“So you’re a _seung_ too, huh?” Princess Haeseung says, steamrolling right over Seunghyub’s attempt to clarify his role in her household. “At least your name makes sense.” 

At what must be his poleaxed expression, Princess Haeseung kindly goes on to explain. “My whole generation is littered with them, supposedly because of a promise grandpapa made to his best friend, but nobody thought to, I don’t know, come up with a list of normal names for my father.” She rolls her eyes for emphasis. “Honestly! Sea winner? Did he even try?”

Mesmerized by the way her hands move around as she speaks, Seunghyub nods in sympathy, and then remembers that he’s supposed to be her advisor, not bodyguard, and opens his mouth again.

“Here,” Hyunjung says, handing him tea in an heirloom celadon cup. “Drink your tea while it’s hot.”

A lifetime of ingrained manners kick in and he rotates the cup slowly in his hands, savouring the aroma of well-roasted, nutty rice green tea. He takes a sip, careful of his tongue, and nods appreciatively at Hyunjung.

“Anyway, joke’s on him, because that’s why I joined the Marines and now everybody’s all up in arms about my unconventional past.” Princess Haeseung finishes, already on the verge of pouting at having to factor other people’s opinions into her life.

“Let us handle the antis,” Hyunjung comments, with a terrifying martial gleam in her eye. It’s funny, Seunghyub thinks, how often people become tripped up in her elegant beauty, the achingly clean lines of her profile, when he has only ever seen a perfectly balanced knife.

Princess Haeseung sighs, and turns to him, eyes puppy-huge with pleading. “ _You_ don’t think I’m going to bring the monarchy to its knees, do you, bodyguard-oppa?”

“Never.” Seunghyub replies, feeling the certainty in every cell of his body, as he looks at her face - the determined cast of her features, the short eyebrows and rounded cheeks that would have been markers for beauty a thousand years ago. He thinks about the strength to rule, the virtues and wisdom of Queen Seondeok, who had also been gifted peonies, though it was a slight from another ruler, and does not worry for Haeseung at all.

-

A week later, Seunghyub has mostly given up on common sense prevailing or the hope that, somehow, Princess Haeseung would check her personnel rolls and realize that hey, he doesn’t belong in her usual rotation of bodyguards. For someone who graduated from the finest school of beating people and being stealthy at it (he’d had to endure an excruciatingly boring press tour prior to enlisting himself and frankly wonders at the people who volunteer), Haeseung doesn’t keep track of how many people are around at all times, or have any real sense of self-preservation.

Thankfully, he’s kept back from public appearances. “You’re supposed to be in mourning, it looks bad.” Hyunjung had told him, calmly sipping her venti Starbucks and not mentioning that he shouldn’t be on bodyguard duty _at all_. Seunghyub discovers, too late, that Chief of Staff Cha does in fact have a sense of humour, and that it mostly involves laughing at the misfortunes of those around her.

(“8 shots of espresso!” Jaehee had shouted at him when he mentioned Hyunjung’s coffee order to her. “With hazelnut syrup and chocolate drizzle and whipped cream!”)

Reprieves like today’s leave him able to hide in the safety of his office, surrounded by three layers of imperial civil servants in a brutalist monstrosity of a building, affectionately dubbed ‘The Choad’ for its aspirational eastern tower gone wrong. He’s balls deep in the Canadian Transport Safety Board report archives, squinting at titles and stubbornly trying to parlay a lifetime of ‘the rock of my grandfather wrapped in the blanket of your aunt’s cousin’s dog’ into something conclusive when his door bursts open and Princess Haeseung breaks in, shirt cheerfully proclaiming that should she be lost, the finder should return her to Jaehee immediately.

Seunghyub presses two fingers to the space between his eyes, certain that he is seeing things, because the princess has a full day of charity events ahead of her, and not even Haeseung’s rebellious streak extends to shortchanging schoolchildren out of the highlight of their day.

“Bodyguard-oppa!” Princess Haeseung exclaims, with zero volume control as always. “You’ve been holding out on me!”

“I beg your pardon, your highness,” Seunghyub says, because it’s fallen to him to observe protocol and reign in the exuberance of her entire staff - an elder statesman in the midst of an excitable brood of ducklings.

Minji, otherwise a sterling office manager, comes in with a glass of chilled ginger jujube tea, ignoring his unspoken instructions not to encourage the madness, and leaves the door slightly ajar when she leaves.

“Is there something I can help you with, your highness?” Seunghyub prompts, when Haeseung collapses into the armchair with glee. Maybe she’s just resting here between events, he hopes, and thumbs at his phone quickly - no texts since the last time he’d checked before diving into the world of aviation accidents.

“They can’t give all the bodyguards office suites like this, can they?” Princess Haeseung asks, feet tucked against the coffee table as she stretches out her shoulders.

“No, they do not, your highness.” Seunghyub says, after a moment of concerned wincing at her spine cracking - twice! - “In fact, I’m -

“Mr. Lee is a security analyst working directly under her imperial majesty,” Minji interjects smoothly, and walks in on cat’s feet with a set of warmed, steaming towels, which she lays on Princess Haeseung’s face and neck.

It’s one thing to have Jaehee blithely ignore his objections and Hyunjung undercutting him at every opportunity, but Seunghyub cannot fathom what they’ve offered his office manager, who’d graduated top of her class in business administration and declaimed an embarrassingly earnest treatise on the importance of the monarchy to the stability of society during her intake interview.

“Sir,” Minji says. “Here’s a faxed copy of her highness’ revised schedule.”

Seunghyub takes it with a wary hand, and keeps Princess Haeseung in the corner of his eye - from this past week’s experience, there’s every possible chance she’d fall asleep under the steaming towels and accidentally suffocate herself. 

“Ah,” he checks the time. He’s spent more hours staring down air traffic safety searches than he’d thought. A part of Seunghyub is thoroughly impressed that she’s managed to show up at a cultural festival, a museum, and a local school fundraiser before it’s even time for supper, and another part of him remembers, with worry, how quiet and withdrawn Seungyeon had become at the end of every day, too well-bred and iron-spined to let the exhaustion show.

Carefully, he picks the towels off of Haeseung, who is, predictably, already asleep. Without discussing it, Minji picks up his laptop and reading glasses, and they retreat to her desk station just outside of his office.

He’s trying to negotiate how to balance his laptop while leaning hip-first against her desk when Lady Park clatters down the hallway, heading straight for him, the heels of her ugly Louboutins striking against the marble floor with metallic sparks.

“My lady,” Seunghyub begins, resigned, because clearly he should have checked the almanac before leaving his rooms today. “As always, it’s a pleasure to see you.”

“You!!” Lady Park hurls at him, in throbbing accents, and really, it’s impressive even with the knowledge that Park Misook had started life as a second-tier theatre actress who’d caught the eye of an investor and vaulted herself into higher circles. 

“How could you?” She continues, projecting her voice down the corridor. “With your fiancée not yet cold in her grave!”

“Excuse me?” Seunghyub doesn’t realise he’s risen from Minji’s desk until he comes to a stop right in front of Lady Park, his voice soft and calm as he’s trained himself to be. He isn’t going to give her the satisfaction of knowing she hit a nerve, of using dead, lovely Seungyeon and succeeding.

“Don’t forget,” Lady Park shouts into his face, clearly sensing the audience gathering at both ends of the hallway. “You came from nothing, you were just a servant, and I won’t let you scheme your way into -”

“You’re right,” Seunghyub says, pleasantly, for the sake of the rubberneckers and gossips, “I _did_ come from nothing. My family has served the crown since my great-grandfather’s time, and every honour we have came from the royal family’s gifts.” 

He looks back for a moment at where Minji is busy dialing for building security, and thinks that she really deserves another raise. Then he faces Lady Park again, raising his voice.

“The dowager empress graciously gave me the honour of being Princess Seungyeon’s companion, and I hope I have not been found wanting - though that judgment is her majesty’s to make, and hers alone. And now I must ask you to cease disrupting our work and leave, Lady Park.”

“How dare you?” She screeches, flapping about for her second wind and the remainder of a badly-memorized script. “I am the wife of a minister!”

“And I am chief councillor to the crown princess, Lady Park.” He nods at her courteously, a studied dismissal, and waves for the guards who hover nervously just out of range.

“Thank you for arriving so promptly,” Seunghyub tells them, because he’s never been less than polite to anyone he’s met in public since he turned seven, and instructs them to lead Lady Park out of the building.

He ignores the whispers at his back and the sound of Lady Park’s shoes tapping against the stone floor, each beat in line with the thudding at his temples. 

Minji puts her hand on his arm. “Hey. Are you okay?” She asks quietly, no reproach or censure in her voice at his pulling rank or forcibly having a distinguished minister’s wife removed from the premises. 

Seunghyub tries to laugh, but the air gets caught in the wrong pipe and he starts coughing instead. In a spectacular display of his luck to date, the door creaks open, with Princess Haeseung standing behind it, confused and obviously sleep-rumpled. The whispers behind him rise into a crescendo, before Minji turns her laser gaze upon them and they scatter back to their own offices.

“I’m starving,” Princess Haeseung announces, half demand and half entreaty, her eyes lingering interestedly on where Minji’s hand is smoothing down Seunghyub’s back.

Fuck it, Seunghyub thinks, if that scene is the result of all his caution and deference. 

“Let me get my car keys,” he tells her, trying to ignore the way Princess Haeseung’s eyes light up at the prospect of street food, the temptation of forbidden fruit.

**Author's Note:**

> /stares at the wreck of my watch later playlist, my photos app, and my sanity/
> 
> Blame kit.


End file.
